For Love And Honor (26 page)

“Oh, Papa, tell me you have not!” Samira
threw her arms around Piers’s neck. “How could you? Mama was so
proud of you, of the way you came to Sicily empty-handed and yet
you achieved so much. She would be so disappointed now.”

“Ashamed would be a better word for what
Yolande would feel tonight,” Alain said in his coldest voice.
Surely this attack ought to rouse Piers out of his apathy. Any
moment now he would be out of his chair and reaching for the sword
that stood propped in a corner, daring Alain to call him a coward
just once more.

“You don’t understand, either of you.”
Shaking off Samira’s arms, Piers rose and tried to walk around the
table and past Alain’s firmly planted form so he could look out at
the garden again.

“Do I not?” Alain moved to block Piers’s way.
“Have you forgotten why we left England?”

“That was different. Joanna lived. She lives
yet, for all we know.” Again Piers tried to step to the window, but
still Alain stood solidly in his path.

“Who was Joanna?” asked Samira. Neither man
answered her.

“
For
eighteen years Joanna has been as lost
to
me as Yolande now is to you,” Alain said with
peculiar intensity. “But I did not turn the world away from my door
or forsake my friends or lock myself into a lonely room because of
it.”

“As I recall, you got drunk,” Piers said.
Samira saw in his eyes the first glimmer of life he had shown for
weeks. Giving up his attempt to get to the window, Piers perched on
the edge of the table and looked from Alain to Samira and back
again. “What do you want of me, Alain?”

“I need your help.”

“To do what?” Piers sounded bored and weary,
making Samira believe he expected to be told of some task set for
him by Roger.

“Read this.” Alain held out his hand,
offering to Piers the scroll he had been carrying.

Piers took it, unfastened the ribbon that
tied it, and began to read. While his attention rested on the
parchment, Alain looked toward Samira and gave her a long, slow
wink.

“So,” Piers said, dropping the scroll
carelessly onto the table, “Roger refuses to relieve me of my
titles and grants me only a temporary retirement, until my personal
affairs are all in order once more. It means nothing. My affairs
will never again be in order. My life is over.”

“Well, mine isn’t!” Alain shouted at him. “I
don’t want to spend the rest of my years staring at a garden or at
the sea while I grow old and feeble. And neither should you. That
scroll, which I wheedled out of Roger only after much effort, means
you will have the time to help me and, by God, I demand that you
do.”

“Help you to do what?” Piers sounded
distinctly uninterested.

“To return to England and solve a mystery
that has been left too long,” Alain said. “To finally clear my name
of the charge of murder still lodged against me.”

“Murder?” Samira cried. “Oh, Theo Alain, not
you!”

“Thank you for your confidence in me, child.”
Over Piers’s bowed head, Alain smiled at her, winking again. “Did
you know your father was named as my accomplice?”

“
Never!
Not Papa! I knew nothing about this. How could anyone ever think
-?” Samira stopped, grinning a
t Alain. “Of course. I
under
stand. Honor demands that
both of you prove your innocence. It will be a difficult and
challenging task, especially after so many years have passed, but
it is a quest that cannot be denied.”

“Exactly.” Alain grinned back at her. “Well,
Piers, what say you to my challenge?”

“England?” To Samira’s delight, Piers
actually seemed to be thinking seriously about the idea. “A long
sea voyage from Sicily to Provence? God, how I hate being
seasick.”

Taking heart at what she saw as a slight
improvement in her father’s mood, Samira hurried to the door to
summon the servants she had previously stationed outside the
study.

“
Just put
everything on the writing table,” she said, scooping up the
document from Roger. “Papa isn’t using i
t right now.”

“What are you doing?” Piers demanded.

“I invited Theo Alain to eat with us,” Samira
informed him. “Since you refuse to leave this chamber, we will just
have to serve him supper in here.”

“
I’m
talking about being seasick and you have the
servants bring
in food?” With loathing Piers
regarded the trays of fruits and baskets of bread, the
platter of roasted chickens and the pitchers of wine now being
arranged on his writing table.

“You don’t have to eat if you don’t want to,
Papa,” Samira said, “but don’t deny our guest a meal. Theo Alain,
may I offer you a piece of chicken?”

“I’ll carve it,” Alain said, sending the
servants away with a gesture. “Samira, you pour the wine.” Quickly,
he sliced the breast of one chicken. Then, with a glance toward
Piers, who had finally reached the window and was standing with his
back to the room, Alain cut off two chicken legs, leaving the
thighs attached, and laid them on one side of the platter.

“If I remember correctly,” he said to Samira,
“you and I both prefer the breast meat.”

“Thank you, Theo Alain. Will you tell me more
about this proposed trip to England?”

“Yes, Alain, do tell us more.” Piers loaded
the invitation with sarcasm, but he did turn from the window when
Alain spoke again.

“What better time for us to go than now?”
Alain said, speaking more for Piers’s information than in answer to
Samira’s question. “With George dead and Philip of Mahdia
commanding the navy, I am no longer assistant to the Emir al-Bahr.
Philip is polite to me, and I think if I were to offer an opinion
on a naval matter, he would at least listen to me, but it’s clear
he thinks I am too old to be of any further use. Did I tell you
that I am now officially retired from the navy?”

“You are not old,” Piers said.

“Then neither are you, for we are the same
age,” said Alain, the gleam in his eye suggesting to Samira that
Piers had just walked into a carefully laid trap.

“Philip ought to value your experience
instead of retiring you,” Piers said, no longer sounding bored or
uninterested in the conversation. He had not looked at the food
since the servants had set the platter down, and he did not look at
it now. His eyes were on Alain, but he picked up one of the chicken
legs and took a bite of it. “A man of your age, or mine, is not
useless. We are as strong as we ever were.” When Piers began to
prowl about the room, gnawing at the chicken leg, Alain smiled at
Samira and nodded his head, as if Piers had already made his
decision.

“
You
know, Alain, there have been too many changes here in Palermo
recently, and most of them for the worse. I saw Roger every day
before”
– Piers stopped
to take a deep breath – ”before Yolande became ill. I noticed how
Roger is much altered since that attack of brain fever he suffered
last year, when he could not talk or move his right side for a
week. There were days when he treated his dearest friends as if
they were his enemies. He was not always kind to Queen Sibyl,
either, or to his own son. Now he has in effect released you and me
from our oaths to remain here and serve him.” Piers took another
bite of chicken.

“This is good. I always did like the leg and
thigh.” He stopped by the table to pour himself a cup of wine.
“Yes, Alain, we might do well to leave Sicily for a while. I will
consider your suggestion.”

“There is no need to think about it, Papa,”
said Samira, overjoyed to see her father eating and talking in his
usual way. “I know the voyage will be just what you need. As soon
as we can find a place on a ship, we will go. How exciting it will
be. I cannot wait to see England.”

Piers and Alain both stared at her.

“
You will
not go to England,” Piers declared, tossing the cleaned chicken
bone back onto the platter. “If I decide to go, you will stay in a
convent in Italy du
ring my absence.”

“Never! Ill run away and follow you.”

“Samira,” Alain put in, “the sea voyage is
long and can be dangerous. Overland travel is almost as bad. We
cannot subject you to such a trip.”

“
What if
you decide to stay in England? Will I the
n never see either
of you again?” Samira demanded. “Will I spend my life in some
dreary
convent because you have
forgotten all about me?”

“I could arrange your marriage before I go,”
Piers threatened, breaking off a piece of bread and popping it into
his mouth.

“
Aha! So
you
are
going! I
knew Theo Alain would convince you to come to life again. But, mark
my words, Papa, until I meet a man I can love as Mama loved you, I
will not marry. If you try to force me to it, I will stand before
all the assembled guests and announce that you are charged with
murder in another land. That ought to keep any reputable family
from allowing a son of theirs to wed me.”

Observing Piers’s horrified face, and the
second large chunk of bread arrested halfway to his mouth, Alain
saw a chance to reach his friend’s sense of humor. Furthermore, he
saw the logic in Samira’s argument.

“Piers, I warned you and Yolande time and
again that you were too indulgent with this girl,” Alain said while
Piers continued to stare dumbfounded at his rebellious daughter.
Alain began to laugh. “You could always take her to England and
consign her to a convent there.”

“
We
were overindulgent?” exclaimed Piers, offended by Alain’s
attempt at humor. “What of you, with all your gift
s and
special treats? What
of George?
Thanks to the two of you, see the kind of daughter I have
now.”

“The most loving of daughters,” Samira
declared. “A daughter who will go with her father anywhere, even
into that cold, dark, northern land. Even as my mother would have
gone with you.”

“You cannot deny it, Piers,” Alain said.
“Yolande would have gone with you, even across the sea for all her
fear of the water, and well you know it. We dare not leave Samira
behind. If Roger suffers yet another change of his recently clouded
mind and decides to strike out at you for some reason, no Italian
convent will be strong enough to keep Samira safe. She must go with
us. Furthermore, we ought to go soon.”

“I will be of great help to you,” Samira
promised. “And I won’t delay you. I’ll be a good traveler; you’ll
see, Papa.”

“Alain?” Piers frowned, shaking his head. “Do
you really feel so strongly about this?”

“I do.” Alain’s glance was level and
straightforward. “We cannot know what will happen in Sicily while
we are gone. We may be away for years. Samira will be safer, and
far happier, with us.”

“To leave all of this, leave everything that
is left of Yolande.” Piers looked around his study. “I don’t think
I can do it.”

“
I am
putting my affairs here in P
alermo and the care of my house
into the charge of a Greek
merchant I know, who is a relative of George’s,” Alain
said. “I trust the man completely. If you like, he could do the
same for you. That way, the house will be waiting for you
undisturbed when you return. Your lands in Italy, like my own, are
well managed by the seneschals we appointed, so there’s no need to
worry about them while we are gone.”

“As for Mama,” Samira spoke up, “you will not
leave her, Papa. She will be in your heart, and in mine, wherever
we go.”

*
* * * *

They left Palermo on the morning tide three
weeks later.

“Theo Alain, how can I thank you for what
you’ve done?” Samira caught his arm, slipping her hand into his
elbow as they walked along the deck. The sea wind made her blue
cloak blow out around her, and her eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Papa is so much better now. All the activity of packing, all the
immediate decisions he had to make helped, but it was your
insistence that he go with you that started it all. In these last
few days he has come to life again.”

“Don’t expect too much of him, too quickly,”
Alain warned, his eyes on the lone figure standing at the rail,
looking backward toward Palermo. “It took Piers a long time to
learn to love Yolande. It will take him an equally long time to
learn to live without her.”

“But he has taken the first step,” Samira
replied. “And so have I. So have you, Theo Alain. The first steps
toward a great adventure and a new life.”

Rohaise

England, 1152-1153

The cold
December wind howled about the walls of Banningford Castle, blowing
open the shutter covering one of the windows in the western tower.
Icy rain spattered onto the cushions padding the ledge below the
unglazed window. Joanna hastened to close the shutter, but paused
with one hand on the latch. From her high room she could see a
section of the road stretching along the other side of the
mo
at. The builders of
the castle had deliberately planned that those approaching
by road would encounter first the forbidding, unbroken stone
curtain of the western wall, and then would be forced to travel
halfway around the outside of the castle until they reached the
drawbridge at the center of the eastern wall. At every step of the
way anyone nearing the castle was under the observation of the
guards, who always stood watch upon the battlements.

The castle was built in the shape of a
square, with a tower at each corner and only two openings in the
outer walls. There was the main entrance across the drawbridge over
the wide moat. Those entering this way went beneath the portcullis
and through a narrow, crooked passage in the twenty-foot-thick
outer wall. At intervals along this tunnel-like entrance metal
gratings were set into the ceiling so flaming oil could be poured
through the grates onto unwanted intruders. The second opening to
the castle was an exit rather than an entrance. It was the postern
gate near the western tower where the lord’s family lived, and was
intended for quick escape in time of emergency. Never in the
history of Banningford had there been such an emergency; the
postern gate was opened only when the captain of the guard
inspected it to be sure the hinges were oiled and working
smoothly.